Winning Powerball ticket sat among unchecked tickets in man’s car. ‘Couldn’t believe it’
A Maryland man has a habit of buying lottery tickets and adding them to a pile in his car, where they remain untouched.
A friend, however, couldn’t wait any longer and “decided it was time to check his tickets,” Maryland Lottery officials said in an Oct. 18 news release.
Using the lottery app, the woman scanned the man’s pile of tickets one by one, lottery officials said.
“As expected, she found minimal $4 and $7 prizes in the pile,” lottery officials said.
But then, she scanned the man’s Powerball ticket for the Saturday, Sept. 28, drawing and learned he had won $50,000, according to lottery officials.
“I told her to scan it again,” the man told lottery officials.
Still in disbelief, the man “went home and looked up the winning numbers online,” he told lottery officials.
“I had to keep checking,” the man said. “I couldn’t believe it.”
The man matched four numbers and the Powerball, missing the $245 million jackpot by one number, leaving him with a third-tier win, lottery officials said.
The Nottingham man told lottery officials he plans to tuck his winnings away into savings.
Nottingham is about an 18-mile drive northwest from Baltimore.
What to know about Powerball
To score the jackpot in the Powerball, a player must match all five white balls and the red Powerball.
The odds of scoring the jackpot prize are 1 in 292,201,338.
Tickets can be bought on the day of the drawing, but sales times and price vary by state.
Drawings are broadcast Saturdays, Mondays and Wednesdays at 10:59 p.m. ET and can be streamed online.
Powerball is played in 45 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
This story was originally published October 18, 2024 at 2:32 PM with the headline "Winning Powerball ticket sat among unchecked tickets in man’s car. ‘Couldn’t believe it’."
